Saturday, March 23, 2013

Texas likes to brag about how friendly
its people are and for the most part, it's true. I remember the
first time I ever came to Texas and anytime I walked into a store, I
received a warm friendly greeting. That was very weird to me, and of
course I ruined it by always responding, “What's it to you?” and
flipping the clerk off for good measure. (I lived in Boston at the
time.)

But then on occasion you run into
someone who is only friendly in the sense that well, at least he
didn't shoot me:

We spent last week at our vacation
house in the Hill Country, which is actually just a nice way of
saying we currently have two mortgages. As luck would have it,
potential buyers came to look at our house. We left for about an
hour, but when we came back, they were still there, so we parked on a
side road to wait.

After about twenty minutes, a white
pickup passed us. The driver slowly made several u-turns up and down
the road before finally coming up beside us. I rolled down my window
and smiled at our friendly neighbor.

Or not. The man, whom I’ll call
Vince, rolled down his window as his truck came to a stop. “May I
ask what you’re doing here?” he asked, eyes narrow with
suspicion.

“Oh, we're just staking out our own
house over there,” I said, pointing to our house. “It’s for
sale, and we’re waiting for some prospective buyers to leave.”

Vince shook his head. “Jesus, what’s
so wrong with that house that it goes on the market every two years?”

“What? Oh. Well, it was on the market
for a while before us, but we've lived there for four years.”

“No, you haven't,” Vince said.
“One and half, maybe two years max.”

I glanced at St. Pauli Girl who was
biting her lip and turning her face away. I think her shoulders
started to shake up and down, just a little.

“Um, no, we bought it in March of
2009. So it's pretty much exactly four years we’ve lived here.”

“No, you haven’t. You haven't been
there that long.”

St. Pauli Girl leaned over to
interrupt. “We moved in March 2009. Four years ago.”

He dropped that argument and moved on
to his next one. “Do you mind telling me how much you're asking?”
he said.

“No, not at all. It's all over the
internet. Two-hundred ten thousand.”

Vince closed his eyes, pinched the
bridge of his nose, and shook his head slowly as if he were getting a
headache. “It’s people like you who are ruining this
neighborhood.”

I misunderstood his meaning, I guess,
and frowned. “We've studied the market quite a bit, and it’s
comparably priced for this area.”

“No! You’re destroying our property
values. You should be asking four fifty!”

“Excuse me?”

“How many square feet you got?”

“Thirty-six hundred.”

“Well, I got nineteen hundred and I'd
be asking three fifty for my house if it were for sale. Don't ruin
it for everyone,” Vince said slapping his left hand on the steering
wheel for emphasis.

I was starting to get irritated. I
said, “You know that house down the road on the corner on five
acres that just sold? It sat empty for two years listed at
two-sixty. They had to remodel and drop the price to sell it.”

“That house was a piece of crap. I
wouldn't board my ex-wife there.”

“Your house must be very nice.”

“Flawless. But I gotta keep constant
guard with those long-hairs living out back behind me. Last week the
sheriff hauled one off. Sent him back to the clink because he broke
his probation.”

“Yeah, there are people at the end of
our street who had the sheriff pay them a visit too,” I said,
talking about what we call the “meth house.”

“There's too many no-gooders around
here. That's why I carry a gun.”

“Good idea,” I said. That's when I
realized we hadn't seen his right hand; it was more than likely
resting on a gun in the seat beside him. I flashed him a bright smile
and put the car in drive. “Thanks for keeping the neighborhood
safe.”

“Well, good luck with your sale,”
Vince said, snorting as he drove off.

Too bad it took us four
two years to meet Vince. But despite destroying the neighborhood
property values, I'm glad we're no longer living between the meth
house and neighborhood militia.

Friday, March 8, 2013

A while back I wrote about my
late-night television guilty habit of watching Ghost Adventures.
I have since lost interest in that show as it has become less about
hunting for ghosts and more about their audio detection devices such
as the “spirit box,” which can amazingly translate white noise
like “grrmphhxsskshhelkuyayt” into “kill you!” I have since
discovered a much more superior show, Finding Bigfoot.

The show follows the adventures of
three bigfoot nerds (including a man named Bobo) and a skeptical
female biologist as they travel the world trying to find hard
evidence of Bigfoot. But you don't have to watch the show--I'll just
summarize one, because they are all pretty much the same:

Opening stock
“preview” scene: video of a roaring beast that looks suspiciously
like a gorilla.

Cut to: The team
is in a car headed to a town hall meeting. Upon arrival, locals
relate their Bigfoot stories. The Bigfoot hunters then pick the
most credible sources from the meeting, jump back into the car, and
tear off to where the most impressive incident happened. There, the
eye witness demonstrates what he/she was doing and what he/she saw or
heard. Then the experts send Bobo to the exact spot of the Bigfoot
sighting. The witness then points out, “No, no, the creature was
much taller than that.” At this point, the experts then deem the
witness as extremely credible, since the measurements reported by the
witness concur almost exactly with other reports of the height and
breadth of a sasquatch (or “squatch,” to those in the know).

One time a witness described a series
of footprints where a Bigfoot had come through. The experts
recreated the footprints and decided that no human could possible
duplicate that gait. The female biologist, ever playing devil’s
advocate, quickly ran through the footprints demonstrating just the
opposite. Bobo said, “Yeah, but how far could you have kept up
that pace, huh?”

At this point the experts pick a spot
to stake out during the night. They separate into pairs and proceed
to make bigfoot calls hoping to attract one or two. The first night
usually ends in disappointment.

Next comes a commercial break including
Bigfoot trivia like:

“True or False. A bigfoot can run
up to 30 miles per hour.”

“True or False. A bigfoot can
swim.”

Amazingly, both of those statements are
true! Not sure how they figured it out, but I guess they timed Bobo
in a forty yard sprint and figured an animal twice his size can run
twice as fast.

Next one member of the team will spend
a few days by himself/herself in the woods in a solo field
investigation. This usually involves a scary encounter with a
raccoon or deer via night vision goggles. Meanwhile, the others
continue interviewing more witnesses.

Finally, the whole team spends another
night in the woods making Bigfoot calls and hitting trees with
baseball bats because bigfoots like sports (another true fact, you
heard it here first). Then they will stumble into an area where tree
branches have been mysteriously bent, which we learn is obviously
caused by a Bigfoot traipsing through the area. Then we reach the
startlingly climax where someone will suddenly say, “Stop!” or
“Ssshhhh! Did you hear that?” and cut to commercial.

After the commercial, we see everyone
looking around through night vision goggles which will display a
small blip in the distance. “Yep, that's Bigfoot,” or more
likely a raccoon, or a deer, or a jackalope. Sometimes they'll say,
“I heard it! There's definitely a squatch in the area!”
Amazingly, they never record the sounds.

In the end, they gather up in the dark
and assess the mission and congratulate themselves: “Well, there
was definitely a lot of activity in the area, and this mission was a
success!”

By contrast, perhaps that's where Ghost
Adventures succeeds: the ghost hunters realized after several
seasons that they needed the viewer to hear the sounds of ghosts, so
they came up with devices that would interpret the white noise for
us, while the Bigfoot crew just says, “Yessirree, we heard a lot of
‘squatches tonight! Trust us. Would Bobo lie?”

But I always have to stay up for the
ending, because I don’t want to miss when they actually capture a
Bigfoot on film.

As a computer programmer, I’ve worked
in a corporate setting for over 20 years. For the past ten years I’ve
worked from home, going into the office usually only once a week, so
I think I'm in a good position to provide detailed summaries of both
realities. Let's take a look at a typical workday for me at home
(the real “me,”) and me in the office (“me” being a composite
of the many office-mates I’ve had through the years).

Working from Home

7 a.m. - 4 p.m.

7:00: I sit down at my desk in
sweats and a t-shirt with a cup of coffee, activate my computer.

7:05: I scroll through my work
emails to see if anything urgent happened since I logged off the
night before. If not, I pull up my personal emails and respond as
needed.

7:15 - 8:30: I scan my newsfeeds
via twitter to see what happened in the world while I was asleep.

8:30 - 9:00: I check the weather
forecast etc., warming up to the idea of thinking about maybe getting
to work.

11:00 - 11:30: Too close to
lunch to get any more computer work done, so . . . a little
housework.

11:30- 12:30: Lunch hour! But
not really. I usually do one of the following:

A. Mow the lawn

B. Empty the dishwasher

C. Ride my stationary bike

D. Laundry

12:30 - 1:00: Eat last night’s
meatloaf at my desk while working (if there’s a time-sensitive
project) or scanning newsfeeds.

1:00 - 2:30: Work continues.

2:30 - 3:00: Break time: I fold
clothes, clean up from lunch, or take a walk if the weather is nice.

3:00 - 4:00: Wrap up whatever
work I need to finish for the day, then read my newsfeeds and hope no
co-workers contact me before 4:00.

4:45: Get a call from my boss.
I answer it because she thinks I might be gone golfing so she's
checking up on me.

Working in the
Office

8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

8:00: Park, lock my car, and
head towards the building. Being parked by 8:00 is considered “on
time” because it's not my fault the parking lot is so far away from
my office. Plus, the elevator takes forever.

8:10: Activate my computer then
head to the break room to get coffee. If the coffee pot is empty,
make a new pot and wait for it to finish. No one else is there yet.

8:30 - 9:30: Back at my desk I
go through work emails and then personal emails. Hearing co-workers’
voices, I wander back to the break room to hang out for a while and
discuss the absence of a Starbucks in the building, how much we hate
our jobs, “the Man,” and non-present co-workers.

9:30 - 10:00: Check newsfeeds
while being subjected to a loud conference call that Leesha two
cubicles down puts on speaker phone.

10:00 - 10:30: Go downstairs,
walk outside at least twenty feet from the building, and take a smoke
break with the handful of employees left who smoke.

11:20 - 11:45: After the
meeting, hang out in the conference room and argue with co-workers
about where to go for lunch.

11:45 - 1:15: I win! It’s the
Japanese steakhouse around the corner. Eight of us sit and watch the
chef do an impressive stir-fry on the grill in front of us. We all
split three slices of fried cheesecake.

1:15 - 1:20: Drop off the to-go
box with leftovers at my desk.

1:20 - 1:45: Smoke break, then I
take the Wall Street Journal to the restroom.

1:45 - 2:00: Back at my desk.
Across the aisle Kip yawns/growls like King Kong, burps loudly, and
makes other bodily noises I haven’t heard since the 5th
grade. He hollers at me that he just sent me a funny video.

2:00 - 2:15: I check out the
YouTube link of “hilarious cat farting.” A few other videos
catch my eye, so I return the favor via an email to Kip.

2:15 - 3:00: I wander down the
corridor, alert Kip to the email I just sent, pause at Rodney’s
desk, and we discuss either:

A. Our previous night's league
softball game

B. Fantasy baseball or football

C. How much we hate our jobs, “The
Man,” and non-present co-workers

D. How hilarious
that “cat farting” video was that Kip just sent

3:00 - 3:15: The afternoon’s
flying by so it’s time to multi-task: Coffee break and smoke
break.

3:15 – 3:45: Get afternoon
work done while wearing headphones and posting IM status as “busy”
so no one will bother me before 5:00 quitting time.

3:45 – 4:45: Catch up on
Facebook, twitter, and my gaming forum.

4:45: Time to leave! Woo-hoo!

4: 46: Get a call from the boss
on my cell phone. I ignore it; she should have called me on my work
phone before I left for the day.

So yes, there are advantages to working
from home. Although, I would argue that my typical work clothes are
a step up from the “casual” office-wear I’ve seen some of my
co-workers show up in. But all in all, the idea that you can measure
productivity by the number of hours that someone “shows up” is
absurd.

About Me

I live in a small town in Texas. I am the real America. I wasn't born in the republic which means I'm not really Texan. I do have a pickup truck but since it's a Nissan, I'm still not considered Texan. I only drive it when no one is looking. I'm a man without a country and a man without a car. I'm an entrepreneur but not a good one as I recently had to close down the family restaurant. But that makes me an economic expert. I can seriously blame the restaurant's closing on Obama, Cheney, NAFTA, Cash for Clunkers, TARP and even Bernie Madoff who never spent millions in my restaurant. Not even a dime.